


Five times Elena almost found out.

by pleasebekidding



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 16:26:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8020873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pleasebekidding/pseuds/pleasebekidding
Summary: 'nuff said. Drabble prompt from tumblr.





	Five times Elena almost found out.

**one.**

Sometimes, Damon leaves via the window. There’s nothing practical about this. He does it because it annoyed Alaric so much the first time. It’s been clear for a long time that Damon regards annoying Alaric as an excellent form of foreplay, one he uses even when there is absolutely no possibility of sex in his immediate future. He might leave the second he’s dressed (Damon, it should be said, is never exactly ‘decent’). Sometimes he spends the night, wakes Alaric grinding back against his semi (Alaric is too easily led, even when he is exhausted). Sometimes, he lies around, eats breakfast in bed, flicks through the channels on the television Alaric almost never turns on.

The point is: with practice, Damon has gotten very good at getting out the window in a hurry.

Elena shouldn’t open Alaric’s bedroom door without knocking. But since she occasionally does, it’s good he’s had the practice. And though she hears Damon’s shoe clip the windowsill, and stares like she’s seen a ghost, she doesn’t actually see him.

“What was that?”

Alaric shrugs. “Probably just a crow,” he says, ushering her from the room.

**two.**

It’s easier when it’s just sex. No actual feelings involved. And that’s all it will ever be, in spite of the occasional Sunday spent in bed achieving nothing, kissing aimlessly, the seam of Damon’s spine a constant temptation. No feelings, no expectations. Alaric reasons that it’s not possible to have any feelings for someone who slept with and turned and killed your wife.

He sometimes has this thought while Damon is running his lips over Alaric’s throat, though, and Alaric has his hand in Damon’s hair.

The phone rings, and Damon reaches out, answers it with a swipe of his thumb. “Make it fast, I’m about to get laid.”

“Damon?”

“You’re the one who rang me, who else were you expecting?”

“I called Ric,” Elena says, and they both freeze.

“Would you look at that. Guess we switched phones.” Damon’s eyes are locked on Alaric’s, and Alaric covers his face with his hand.

“Huh,” Elena says. “Well, I’ll call _your_ phone, then, tell him to go find you. Enjoy your _date_.”

Alaric covers his face with a pillow, and Damon snickers at him.

**three.**

“You’ve gotta leave.” The loft is a mess. Alaric isn’t sure there is a single surface they haven’t bumped up against, in the last twenty-four hours, or draped over, or… “Seriously, you have to leave. Elena’s on her way here. I slept in.”

“We could just tell her.” Damon has a towel tied around his waist. No, it’s precariously perched on his hips. Alaric isn’t sure who you have to pay off to completely defy gravity like that, but he’s spellbound, tempted to call Elena and tell her he’s too hung over for their archery lesson, and drag Damon back to bed.

Which is why jumping out the window when Elena knocks on the door is out of the question. The towel wouldn’t survive the fall, and the citizens of Mystic Falls wouldn’t survive Damon strutting down the road in his birthday suit, smiling for the cameras.

Alaric answers the door in sweatpants, hair sticking every which way, and by the time Elena has fought past his protests, Damon is sitting on the couch, ankles crossed over the foot he has resting on Alaric’s coffee table, reading yesterday’s paper.

“’Lena,” he says, and blows a kiss. “Come to aggravate our favorite non-morning person? Because it’s too late, I got here first.”

“Well,” she says, “I brought donuts.” And she smiles, and Damon tosses the paper aside, and swans out again.

**four.**

It’s Damon’s fault. The coat room is full of fur coats, he says. Soft! And he can compel Miss Mystic Falls 1999 to stand guard. And his eyes are electric and Alaric’s ability to say no has been weakened by weeks of disuse, and there might, actually, be _some_ feelings involved.

Not that he’d admit it out loud.

Not that the fact that he’d never admit it out loud means that Damon isn’t aware of it, and is shamelessly exploiting Alaric in his weakened state.

And the fur coats are nice. He has Damon pinned to the wall with a mink coat behind him, definitely mussing up his clothes, his hair. Damon’s mouth is shiny and bruised-looking.

And Elena is arguing with Miss Mystic Falls 1999.

Damon groans, and lets his forehead drop to Alaric’s shoulder.

“We could tell her,” he says.

This breaks Alaric’s heart, a little bit, because he knows Damon would rather not be a dirty little secret. And he gets it. He lets his fingers linger in Damon’s hair a second, over the back of his neck, and he apologizes silently.

“I got this,” Damon says, and he exits the coat room, catching a flustered Elena and leading her back to the crudité table and a glass of cold champagne.

**five.**

Alaric gets fanatical about family dinners, sometimes. Unfortunately, while Elena is easily swayed, Jeremy rarely is, so it’s the two of them. Music on the stereo, discussing quietly where Elena might go to college.

“Do you think Damon is seeing someone?”

Alaric almost chokes on a green bean, but gives himself the Heimlich maneuver, and survives the ordeal intact. “Damon who?”

Elena gives him a withering look. “Salvatore? Your undead bestie? I think he’s seeing someone.”

Deflect. Deflect! But Alaric is stuck. “What makes you say that?”

“Well,” Elena reasons, “He has an ‘I just got laid’ look on his face, regularly, which I haven’t seen since Andie…” She swallows, because she can’t think about the fact that Stefan killed Andie. “And he’s stopped sniffing around me. And sometimes he seems really happy. He’s actually sticking to blood bags…”

 _And me,_ Alaric thinks, fingers moving almost unconsciously to play over a fresh bite mark just above his hip.

“But I don’t know. I think whoever it is… he shouldn’t be seeing them.”

Alaric’s stomach drops. “Why?”

“I think it might be someone… married, I don’t know. Because he won’t talk about it. He jokes that I’m jealous and… and then that’s it. He won’t say another word. Or maybe it’s someone who doesn’t appreciate him enough, and is making him keep it a secret.”

Alaric has never felt so crappy. He stares at his steak for a few long moments.

“But it’s good to see him happy,” Elena muses. “That’s a start.”

**bonus.**

Damon goes out the window, and comes back in the front door ten minutes later with donuts. Donuts from the good donut place a town over. His cheeks are pink and flushed and he twirls Elena in the kitchen as Alaric descends the stairs.

“You’re here early,” Elena says, little nose all scrunched up.

“Brought breakfast,” Damon says, bumping her hip with his own.

This is it. This is the moment. This is… bullshit, and Alaric is done with it, because there’s just not enough happy to go around and it seems stupid to keep it a secret. He’s in Damon’s personal space before Damon sees it coming. He catches Damon around the waist and almost bends him in half backwards with the ferocity of the kiss.

When he lets Damon stand under his own steam again, and turns to Elena, she has her chin in her hand, and her elbow on the table, smile on her face that threatens to unhinge her jaw.

“You two are idiots,” she says fondly, and reaches for the bag.


End file.
